


Do not gaze into the abyss

by captainhurricane



Category: Berserk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:12:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1989372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A what if for the Eclipse if Femto had set his sights on Guts instead of Casca.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do not gaze into the abyss

One cannot sacrifice without love. Without those feelings that make a human. Griffith had learnt it when he had gathered his clan of misfits around himself, had made them grow and win and reworked them into an army without compare. He had loved them, sure enough. Had sold his body for them and now-

I sacrifice

he whispers into the dying light of life and closes his eyes to the slaughter.

The sky is bleeding and his men, his little hawks who flew too close are dying. Guts can’t get to Griffith anymore (back to life and to light), his sword letting out a pitiful twinge as it tries not to break in two. There is Judeau, valiant, mischievious Judeau who doesn’t manage to keep his horse from panicking. The apostles slither and slide close, they whisper of death and joy and promise eternal pain.  _All for the White Hawk._  Pippin has to step over corpses to reach another sword, murmuring a quiet apology in his mind that’s slowly becoming more and more fuzzy and full of knowledge that death is clutching him in icy fingers.

Casca stands strong even when her fingers are trembling and Judeau takes his last breath right next to her, his love confession dying with him. Casca ignores the hitch of panic in her throat, the tears on her cheeks. She doesn’t see anyone anywhere, her ears filled with cries of pain, seeing nothing but the terrible red of a human heart around her. She runs as she hears them slithering towards her, laughing like this nothing but a game, smelling like fresh entrails and something horrible and rotten. Casca curses, tries not to fall down as the ground keeps shaking under her, the faces formed on it opening their mouths in silent screams.

She doesn’t look up to the four faces up, up, up on the tower, doesn’t hear the laughter the woman-creature with her wings wide lets out at the sight. Casca’s heart thumps, like desperate to keep her alive for one last second. No escape, no escape, no escape, the apostles hiss and murmur behind her, fleshy tentacles creeping close and she falls. Valiantly, uselessly she stabs them with her sword and loses herself for a moment to the black and red in her mind, to the rip of her clothes and clatter of her armour.

”-ca!”

Her breath is hitching in her throat, her eyes wide and no longer seeing her comrades anywhere, the band of the Hawks all but slaughtered to the last man. She feels hot and cold, her skin burning, knowing the wetness on her body comes from the brand burned into her skin.

”-sca!”   
  


She claws at the tentacles holding her, tries not to vomit at the smell the Apostles emit when they push their faces close to her, growling and hissing and snarling.

”Casca!” This time, she hears it, awful hope twinging in her heart. There he is, his large sword finally broken in two, his skin splattered with red but alive, unbelievably alive. Casca whimpers and squirms, managing a kick against one of those death faces around her, the shreds of her trousers all but ready to fall off. Guts lets out a growl of a wounded animal and attacks.

It doesn’t last long. What use is there for hope in a hopeless place like this?

He descends from the tower with a flap of great wings, his body gleaming in the unnatural red light. Casca is pulled away from Guts, Guts pulled close to the winged being and they know, oh, they recognize those eyes under that hawk-like helmet. Now more of a mask than something to be pulled away. The remains fo Guts’ sword clatter close enough to Casca and she tries, she squirms against the monsters holding her. Tries not to watch as this not-Griffith drags Guts close like he was nothing but a weightless child instead of the beast of a man he is. Casca struggles, her scream of pain echoing around the red space as one monster clamps its teeth on her arm, nearly severing it in instant, scaly fingers holding her head in place, one claw pushing her eye until her eyesight bleeds red and gray and still-

still she sees, has to watch as the winged man (not a man, she swallows, now sobbing with her frustrated snarls of rage, not a man, Griffith would never, not their Griffith, not their shining beacon of impossible hope) pushes Guts’ face to the rotten ground and pushes- Casca can’t breathe, desperation pushing out all the air in her. Guts is screaming now, desperate sounds that Casca wants to never hear again, watching how their strongest Hawk is reduced to nothing but a shaking mess of desperation and grief. Had she known that Guts’ mind is flickering back to his childhood, to the moment his innocence was brought to dust, she would have felt her rage grow even more. She tries to yank what’s left of her arm free, her body and mind throbbing with pain, with rage for all the things of this neverending, rotten day. Guts’ arms tremble in the hold of scaly wings, his mouth open and breathing in the smell of corpses. The winged beast holding him down is staring at Casca, hips moving with the rhythm of her rapid heartbeat. She lets out a scream, struggling and squirming and her heart and body ready to give up and fall into nothing but pain. The Apostles whirr and hiss around them, their horrid laughter making the sight into a spectacle Casca knows she will dream of for years to come, if there are any left.

The winged man stares still, the eyes that were piercing blue are now the red of this heavy sky. Guts is letting out choked sounds that to Casca are starting to sound like someone not quite all there anymore. No, she yells to the four figures up, up, up in the tower. No, she shouts to the winged beast that was Griffith once, to the beacon of hope now stained with red. Casca’s free hand finally clutches the handle of Guts’ broken sword and while it’s still heavy, she can raise it and bring it down the teeth holding her other arm. No, she shouts at the bulging eyes on top of that mouth. She is sobbing, but they are tears of rage as she starts hacking down what’s left of her arm. The claws holding her head keep it turned towards that sight of Guts losing his mind but Casca grits her teeth and brings the broken sword on her arm again and again and again.

The mouth underneath the mockery of the hawk-like helmet curls into a smile.

Casca gets free, unable to know anything beyond her pain and his pain, Guts no longer resisting. It all vanishes into the bleak, rotten sky as it breaks open. Casca’s last thought before darkness comes is that it’s strange to hear such steady clopping of hooves.  


End file.
